Joerg

Yes, this is Fazzur's friendship with Sor-eel. While Fazzur has kinship ties with Moirades, I read this as a professional and personal relationship through shared service-time in the Provincial Army and/or cooperation with the Cavalry Corps. Does Sor-eel have any direct ties to the Royal Family of Tarsh? It isn't clear whether this friendship extends to a good relationship between Sor-eel and Fazzur's sons, after Sor-eel is removed from the governor post in Pavis and disappears from the written record. I have little doubt that they don't let his older half-brother Pharandros meddle with the education of young Phargentes, but there might be significant meddling by the Great Sister (since the Red Emperor doesn't seem as if he could be bothered to care). I wonder whether their influence over the Molari-sor ruling clan of Oraya isn't greater than over the royal house of Tarsh, both through Hon-eel and because of their role in installing the Molari-sor over the previous satraps from the Ari-ji. On the other hand, Phargentes all but cancelled the influence of the Sylilan lineage of the Conquering Daughter in the Provinces. But I don't see him as very manageable. Moirades may have been more biddable. Pharandros appears to be torn between advisors. Would the Eel-ariash be behind the Phargantites?

One more reason why these bands and oasis folk should have interacted with one another, whether taking these Sartarites on as protectors, or in a parasitic relationship like the Vadrudi in the Golden Age and the Gods War.

This is an excellent point which hasn't been raised before, but which makes a lot of sense why Snodal and the Syndics chose to attack the God of the Silver Feet rather than the White Bear spirit itself. This raises the question whether Dormal's arrival in Loskalm re-awakened the god, or at least his language Tradetalk, or whether a new common language has been distributed by the Kingdom of War. At least part of the Green Elves are a fairly recent presence, having entered Rathorela only in 1279, and sharing their longbows with the bear folk (Guide p.233) probably set the roots for the White Bear Empire in those 220 years of cohabitation. There is no indication that the Green Elves were any less friendly to the other Hykimi of Rathorela, but the Rathori physique made them uniquely suitable for the increased strength self bows made from dead wood that the aldryami provided them (at least the wood for). Contrary to English/Welsh myth, the yew longbow is nothing but a self bow with a penchant to higher than normal draw weights - way heavier than required for ordinary hunting of deer or birds, although well suited for hunting boars, aurochs or similarly well-muscled (i.e. -armored) prey. That unusual draw weight and a rigorous training regime to qualify for the status of the secondary warrior nobility is what created the myth. But anyway, the myth is continued in Glorantha, so the Rathori are the one human culture to use this dead-wood extra-strong self bow. Coming from a hunter culture with very muscular physique, their elf-provided stave-built bows will outperform other yew bows (even those by other bear cultists like Odaylans) by a factor of possibly 1.5 in terms of range and possibly damage (haven't checked any of the rules).

Because they are agriculturalists in Prax, and without Argrath or a sufficiently powerful lieutenant of his present in Pavis, these clans will be reduced to Vendref status sooner rather than later. From the perspective of Praxian nomads, they become a grounder group of farmers which can be forced to give you tribute whenever you stop over here (and no other nomad group pushes you out). Fertility-wise, the Zola Fel valley acts just like an oasis. Plants which won't grow anywhere else in the Wastes will bear fruit here, whether Teshnan rice or Dragon Pass barley and wheat. The magical influence of the River blocked Eiritha's draw on this area's fertility. All of this means that the river fulfills all criteria for oasis fertility, it just is way bigger than any other oasis (except the Sacred Ground around the Paps, minus that one hex in the northwest). The Sartarites are descended from the Vingkotlings, which means that they count Tada's twin daughters among their ancestors. Not completely unrelated. The Tada-shi are the remnants of the old Earth Worshippers, little different from the folk who built Ezel or Nochet. Remove Argrath's sheltering hand (e.g. after Yoran) for a year, and the clans will either have capitulated to the Nomads, or they will have been destroyed, possibly replaced by less belligerent replacements. Culling all the rebellion will take considerably longer, but how much focus will Argrath have on the city of Pavis once he is bound in Saird and Peloria? Which of his lieutenants will he send to provide his promise of safety, and what will it be worth as Chaos encroaches? The Flood caused by the floating bit of Valind's Glacier cut off will temporarily push all Orlanthi out of the region. Where will the survivors who made it into Redwood go once the sea has receded? The Indagos folk were inhabitants of Old Pavis/the Rubble, and are specifically non-Sartarite, non-Orlanthi (prior to taking over that stretch of the Scritha River). They seem to have been agriculturalists or at least horticulturalists anyway, or they wouldn't have been interested in farmland, so this makes an origin as former Pure Horse Folk unlikely. This leaves potential oasis folk which might have joined Pavis and Joraz Kyrem when they built their city. From a nomad perspective, the Indagos and the Sartarite clans are almost indistinguishable. The Indagos might be better using local spirits than the Orlanthi who would invoke their foreign deities instead. But again, both types are grounders, not riders. Discussing cultural differences between them beyond the military problem they pose is idle.

It isn't quite clear whether Sheng was dead when he was placed in that Lunar hell. Hofstaring was very much alive when he was pulled down, but entering Hell usually means you die, even if your body remains fully functional. Being carried off into some alien hell is a major wrench thrown into your proven "get free from Hell" path. Usually you need someone from the outside to carve a path to you, like Harmast did for both Arkat and Talor. The case is still open whether Belintar can be returned the same way, but King of Sartar does mention a Lord Harshax. All capital H heroes do, one way or another. Arkat of the many cults and the art of switching paths on the Other Side would have been able to explore beyond the neighborhood of the divine Other Sides through experimental heroquesting, and setting up his demesne there. The old concepts of Heroquesting included the possession of Free Will by mortals and heroes, something that could be expended to shape your own realm, setting it "in stone" or perhaps rather "in story". This was part of how offering your body to Belintar was attractive - you would be transported to a virgin portion of the Holy Country Otherworld and be able to set up your very own Apple Lane (Gringle's seat of retirement), only much nicer and more magical. (But no need to forego the comfort of having Ulerian priestesses on site, or avatars if on the Other Side...)

Having two different Humakti pulling the same Odysseus stunt ("my name is nobody", vs. Polyphemos) in the same region would be against Occam's Razor. I think it was in one of the APA-zines where Greg chronicled his Sartar campaign that he commented on his amusement about this. The variant spelling was intentional by the player, I suppose, but in the HQ publication maybe it was just that autocorrect interfered, or an editorial decision to use only "serious" spellings.

Whut? RQ3 bestiary (book 4 in the DeLuxe box, IIRC) had the calculations which was all that I needed, and hit point allocation tables for a number of body shapes. Most vital/protected body part aka chest 2/5 total HP, head, other body parts like abdomen and major limbs 1/3 total HP, secondary limbs like human arms or quadruped legs 1/4 total HP, lesser limbs (e.g. chitinous ones whose loss wouldn't incapacitate) 1/6 total HP. If any sample characters deviated from this, I never noticed, because I have never bothered to look up any numbers, but always calculate on the spot unless I am using a handout (which is rarely the case). Plus there is always a chance that neither player characters nor opposition are at full HP, giving just enough wiggle room to avoid total fails. (I did translate this part of the rules to German for private use, but didn't notice any discrepancies with the table. But then possibly I just calculated the values rather than transcribing the table entries without checking the text portion or the numerical tables verbatim, rounding mathematically correct.) RQ3 offered enchantments which would be available to major adversaries, pumping up location HP or AP - offering some wiggle room to avoid total pushovers, too. Then there was Enhance CON, which would create a few temporary total HP that could raise location HP by one or two for the duration of the spell with reasonably restrained sorcerers.

Let's be honest: how long have you played a character with characteristics like that in an ongoing campaign? A character with average stats throughout has plenty of disadvantages, like being unable to cause damage to an opponent in leather armor even for unparried hits quite often. Without the damage bonus, playing any kind of fighter is an exercise in "pling", as the range of weapons you are limited to doesn't really offer a fixed number added to the die roll. "Roll stat times 5" is a penalty game, too. Even more so when it comes to "stat times 3". To make a character at least somewhat above average, you have to choose dump stats (note the plural). If you are fine with playing the charming damsel in distress in your party of adventurers, no big deal. If the dumb hitter is your forte, bad luck - 8 is the minimum score for INT. RQ3 allowed to play the ugly brute (APP 5 or less) who still could inspire and use spirit spells, but RQG returns with CHA, combining leadership and spirit mastery with appearance. One in four characters will have one stat or more above 16 without any modifications. Every second player will have at least one stat at 16 using unmodified dice. True, you can buy down SIZ and INT to 10 to get these 6 points to raise a stat to 16 or more, and a second stat at 14 or so. Enough to give you a damage bonus and a slightly better strike rank, and to be able to wield a heavy hitter weapon. Or you can opt for the nerd wizard with pitiful STR and CON - the very D&D stereotype that RQ made obsolete. You can plan on lowering trainable stats at the start of your career, opting to spend valuable time and effort to get them to somewhat effective levels without capping your personal maximum attainable value well under species maximum (as per RQ3). Playing an imperfect character can be challenging and fun. Playing an ineffective character can be jarring, leading to a much higher death rate of such characters even beyond their greater vulnerability.

To me the text you quoted is clear. If both STR and DEX are below the requirements, all attacks and parries with the weapon are performed at half skill. A character with DEX 11 and STR 11 will be able to wield a Rapier at normal skill, although his style will be markedly variant from the normal style. It isn't clear whether excess DEX can make up for lack in STR. Given the availability of spirit magic spells that cause temporary increases in either of these stats, it makes sense to train a weapon even if it cannot be used without a penalty without that boost. I do wonder whether having too low stats lets you roll your skill increase ticks against full or against half skill, though. Can training under adverse conditions make improvement easier?

Naimless is a member of the Temple of the Wooden Sword at this time, located in Sartar, which makes her enough of a Sartarite in my book. Only 55 miles inside the Wastes is far enough to avoid contact with vengeful feuding clansfolk from back in Sartar, which might mean a semi-permanent population of Sartarites here, and possibly at other oases, possibly providing some "civilized" craft as a service. And I doubt that all members of Alain's expedition would have been Humakti - the surviving Arroyan shows that other experts would be likely, as do the adventures of the Temple of the Wooden Sword. If the goal of RQG is to pick up where RQ2 petered out, there should be numerous such bands of exile hobos eking out a meager life in Prax. Yes, there are Orlanthi settlers and refugees who have settled down to an ordinary Orlanthi life in Pavis County. We have the numbers. And technically, the folks who join resident clans aren't Sartarites any more, but a new type of uppity Oasis Folk in the river valley. Much like the Indagos. There are probably as many (combined) city dwellers without clan membership in Pavis County and itinerant exiles, quite a few of them registered as adventurers under who knows what false identities, or just re-equipping/re-sacrificing in New Pavis or Badside, operating from Adari or Barbarian Town or even Corflu, working as caravan guards when refraining from banditry. Others may live as guests of the Pol Joni, much like Olgkarth and his band of Pavis Survivors did when Dorasar contacted him. All the oases have shrines that may be of interest to Sartarite exiles hiding out in Prax, e.g. Adari or Barbarian Town, for the purpose of spell recovery or spirit magic acquisition. It is not like there are Theyalan missionaries inciting the Oasis Folk to step up and defend themselves against those Praxian take-overs, although the "Seven Samurai/Glorious Seven" trope could be played at any of the Praxian oases against some particularly awful occupation (e.g. by Lunar Sable phratries tolerating Chaos allies like Imperial ogres). But the very existence of a farmer-warrior who works his own little plot in an oasis but who is ready to defend his harvest might be a bad example that might re-awaken Tada-shi pride. Likewise nosy Lhankor Mhy folk researching how they can use ancient Praxian magic to bargain their way back into their Sartarite clans. Even more so if this happens during the Windstop. But, come to think of this, rose-tinted glass wearing Seven Mother missionaries are as likely to bring this to pass, and create a problem with uppity oasis folk for innocent Praxian clans taking over an oasis. There is too little in print about interactions with Praxian clans and Oasis Folk at an occupied oasis. Pilgrims from other clans or tribes do have a legitimate cause to access the oasis shrine, but will have to negotiate or even bully their way through the current lords of the oasis. Oasis folk will have holy folk and possibly a few slightly trickster-like wretches taking stuff from pilgrims or even occupators. They might also have some hidden avengers among their numbers, striking unexpectedly and anonymously at the worst perpretators with copper axes.

Greg used to run Hero Wars games where every player represented a community, in turn represented by a very limited number of abilities and a single score for each subunit of the community. There was some resource management involved, too. I played a game at some incarnation of Tentacles where each played controlled one uz faction of the Blue Moon Plateau, with the overall challenge to provide the optimum food to the oldest Mistress Mother to give birth to the new form of Surface World uz, untainted by the Curse of Kin. In our game, we managed to locate the cap of one of the eight planetary sons of Yelm - actually the top tier of his ziggurat - and attempted to transport it to Blue Moon Plateau. We didn't consider that this Son of Yelm also was an incarnation of Sedenya, and were intercepted by forces of the Empire. The game ended there and then, but as a narrator I would have allowed a second game where an underworld ambush to retrieve that thing from Lunar safeguarding could have been staged. I don't think there is anything like this published as an rpg. The concept is provably playable, although creating this as a genre pack might be kind of hard.

If you think of Cohen the Barbarian from Diskworld, he was able to use his full ability range, but on occasion he would have to roll against some ailment in order to be able to continue. No reason to treat ancient heroic Gloranthan humans who failed to achieve the avoidance of aging through heroquesting any differently. Accomplished heroquesters usually avoid aging and have a backdoor from the Court of the Dead (or some other stage down there in Hell) - Hofstaring definitely had both, and I suspect so does Gringle, though possibly at more advanced phsysical age. Hofstarings problem was that he had been sent to a different Hell in his body, a Lunar hell which was neither available for Chalana Arroy Resurrection paths even if there had been enough of him left for a Heal Body/Regenerate combo to provide something his soul could have been returned to.

RQ3 offered a ridiculously low number of characteristic points (IIRC 80) to distribute among the stats, obeying species maximum restrictions. The combined method aimed at 93 points (IIRC) as the cap sum to which rolled stats could be raised with up to ten characteristic points allocated by player choice, obeying species maximum restrictions. Characters having higher stats aren't really game breakers - it is legitimate (though exceedingly rare) to roll up a character with maxed values in all stats. One of the few cases where the old joke that the character's only weakness is his humility might be true. Having maxed out stats all over doesn't make a RQ character a Mary Sue. The skills play too much of a role, and maximal hit points are nice to have, but will result in maybe 2 or 3 more location hit points than your average human - nothing an overhead troll maul or a trollkin spear impale/critical in the abdomen, chest or head couldn't cure.

The enlightened have as many souls as do ordinary folk, or more. The Orlanthi recognize five elemental souls, the Dara Happans a sixpartite soul, and Lunar illuminates call themselves "sevened", indicating a seventh soul. Upon death, each of these souls will return to the appropriate origin, waiting to be returned to the cycle. The most dominant of these souls will probably carry much of the identity of the former living being. Mystics who approach the Ultimate by shedding their ties to the world (as e.g. the draconic school that Obduran and Ingolf belonged to) overcome their elemental ties to the world in the first few stages of gradual enlightenment, without necessarily casting them off. Obduran demonstrated that you could be a fully awakened draconic worshiper and still an active worshiper of Orlanth, and Ingolf did the same (but failed to advance as far as Obduran). Not sure about worthies like Lorenkargatan or Isgangdrang, and pretty sure that the EWF Sun Dragon that became Emperor was a solar worshiper rather than a worshiper of Orlanth. Ingolf's afterlife was chosen after he had squandered all of his draconic advances to Entanglement, and after he had started his mystical exploration a second time. When the Black Dragon came to fetch him, he was still sent to the most advanced state of being/unbeing that he had attained in his first enlightenment. It is unknown whether his second approach had brought him that far, or whether he had been successful to attain any stage of enlightenment at all. There is no mention of his other souls, even though he is a canonical hero of Orlanth who can be reached through worship, so apparently his Storm Soul made its way to Orlanth despite his draconic identity having been carried off to Kapertine.

The sequence of the seasons doesn't correspond to any of these systems, either... Sea - Fire - Earth - Dark - Storm - (Sacred) Zzabur's sigil has the elemental superiority sequence: Darkness eats Earth nags Storm churns Water quenches Fire burns Darkness The sequence of elemental ages is yet different (with Darkness appearing twice, before the Seas, and after Storm). Dark -> Sea -> Earth -> Fire -> Storm -> Dark -> Chaos (If you eliminate the second Dark, you get the sequence of the Theyalan week days: Freeze (Dark), Water, Clay, Fire, Winds, Wild, Gods Unless you count the Flood as the age of the Seas, which gives you Earth -> Fire -> Storm (can possibly be skipped) -> Sea -> Storm (again) -> Dark -> Chaos The character sheet sequence of the pentagram is yet another. Air trumps Fire? Then why was Umath/Umatum dismembered by Jagrekriand/Shargash? (And when did we first learn about this?) Edit: Missing the obvious here: the RQG arrangement is the vertical arrangement of the elements in the cosmos.

Biturian's travelogue - the Humakti duel at Tourney altar and Pairing Stone have Sartarite encounters, and with a quite high likelihood the Chalana Arroyan who had accompanied Alain's party was from Sartar, too. Moonbroth had few if any free Orlanthi other than Biturian, and Day's Rest had storm bull worshipers who may or may not have included Sartarites (as the RQG sample characters show, you cannot tell from their steeds whether they are Praxian or Sartarite). The Paps and Sun County had none. We don't have any encounters for Cam's Well or other oases with Oasis Folk population.

How distant are the Tarshite royal house and the Errio-unit of Sylila? Philigos' sons' followers (and Fazzur's family) spent their exile during Palashee's reign on Sylilan holdings. And how much influence to the Eel-Ariash have on the Tarsh court? Reuniting their Hon-eel bloodline with their more recent results (Jar-eel) needn't mean that Phargentes (son of Philigos) was their agent.

Perhaps it is seen as a disease rather than a consequence of aging. Old people are revered for their wisdom. But then, certain forms of madness are regarded as sacred, too.

It taps the life/breath-giving magic out of the air. If you tap the magic (the hardness?) out of a rock, the rock will crumble to dust, but tapping usually only removes a quality out of something. When the quality is the size (as with those blue-clad diminutive folk of Halkamelem near Sogolotha Mambrolal, Guide p.212), you might argue that a quantity is stolen. Let's play around with this. If you tap a house, will it be more prone to collapsing, will you create a hole in the wall, or will it shrink? If you want a hole in the ground, can you just tap it? When you tap a flame, can you still burn the fuel? Will the heat of the flame disappear, or its light? Tapping converts an intrinsic quality into one-use magic points. The effect of long-term tapping is described in the Guide in the description of Arolanit (p.414);

That's Pavis County, a cause lost since when the Praxians gambled away their participation in Dorasar's city. And anyway, protected or not, they will have to provide passage and support to Praxian clans passing through, like good Oasis Folk should. But there were Sartarites in many of the Oases as well, teaching the Oasis slave population weird stuff about liberty and equal rights. It is better that they have left from there. Yes. But they may count as an annoyance, too, and as one that has gone largely away. And Jaldon is the Paps Khan. Much reason for annoyance among the priestesses of Eiritha.

The second awakeners come out of hibernation when Rathor the White Bear God still is alive and well. I do wonder what happened to their White Bear cultist guardians of their hibernation. Did they experience normal time during the Ban? If so, did they manage to form some sort of survival cult to provide generations of guardians? And what about other Hsunchen sharing the Rathori territory? Does the Rathori hibernation pull the entire sections of Rathorela into the timeless slumber of the Underworld? What about the Green Elves? These questions aren't answered by the Guide, which means you'll have to decide for your campaign.

Both names describe the same place. Exile Stead refers to the Berennethtelli survivors of the conflict with Lokamayadon that led to the immolation of Brolarulf the Poet, who fled to the outskirts of Prax to avoid further damage from this feud. This is where Harmast Barefoot grew up and managed to get initiated despite Lokamayadon having usurped the initiation myth, leading an entire generation of Heortling initiands to their deaths or at least spiritual damage and unable to reach Orlanth. Here's a thread discussing this: Dundealos tribal lands used to end a good way north of this, but when the tribe was dismantled by the Lunars who constructed the New Temple on their lands, significant portions of that tribe fled south and re-populated the hard to secure farmland (but ok grazing) around this place. You might say this was the traditional "oasis" for the Pol Joni, but saying it was their center would ignore their dominance in the higher quality grazing grounds between Adari and Swenstown.

Depends entirely on how often you slay it, so it has to reform in its cave on the moon. Overall quite low, I would say.

On the matter of fluid physics: there remains stale air, so you don't create a vacuum. It just becomes unbreathable (like multiple times exhaled), and I guess not exchanged while under the influence of the spell. That's if you remove all the air, but as I read the magic, it removes the breathable quality of the air, not the substance itself. This spell doesn't create voids - you would need some Chaos component for that. So basically, think of this like the Gloranthan version of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. (Note that real world oxygen levels of above 20% are useless for breathing when the carbon dioxide content of the air reaches 5% - the problem is that you cannot exhale carbon dioxide any more, so that the carbon dioxide bound to your hemoglobine doesn't make place for oxygen. Breathing through water or alkaline solutions may mitigate that problem slightly, and absorbers with calcinated caustic chalk will give you several minutes of CO2 removal. Similar problems occur when you use a snorkel with a volume greater than your normal lung capacity - if you are unable to expel the exhaled air, you'll suffocate. But a candle flame might still burn on.) Does the spell description state whether this will extinguish flames? The quality of air required by flame doesn't necessarily have to be the same as the quality required for breath, despite our chemistry telling us they both require oxygen and exhaust carbon dioxide, but the Orlanthi concept of Breath also includes moving air. Still/stale air may still support a flame while making breathing organism's suffocate. How does this spell interact with air/storm elementals, and how does it work in a storm/strong breeze?

Yes and no. The revelation of Illumination is the realization of or confrontation with the Ultimate, the source of all energies coursing through Glorantha, and the Void (which is where all the energies go). The Void is the vast realm of raw potential unbound by rules or shape. Outside of the universe that is Glorantha, this is as it should be, and calling it "chaotic" or random is correct in the sense of modern physics. Another word for Glorantha is Creation, and this refers to the origin of the universe. The raw potential of the Void got structured, was given rules and shape, tentatively at first with Darkness, and ever more strict afterwards. All this Creation was only possible by drawing upon the potential of the Void, through Creation. At some point, the potential of the universe to accomodate more Creation was satiated. Depending on who you ask, further Creation then broke the world, whether you blame the Birth of Umath or ultimately the birth of Wakboth. The seams of the world were weakened, and the void's raw potential for both Creation and Destruction crept into the world. Unchecked by rules, it became the source of unchecked mutation and of annihilation, and was called Predark or Chaos. The experience of Illumination usually comes at you unprepared, even if you have been meditating on this for ages. Nysalorean illumination comes as a shock, but it is possible to prepare yourself for that. One result of illumination - whether Nysalorean or draconic - is the realization that Chaos is an expression of the Void just as much as Creation is an expression of the Void. Another result is the insight that even divine or runic energy is handed down from the Ultimate, and that divine retribution is just one such flow of energies, as much as rune magic cast by an initiate is. That realization is what provides the immunity to spirits of reprisal. Unrealizaiton and refutation of the material world is at the heart of both draconic and Vithelan forms of mysticism. Practitioners usually approach this very slowly, through numerous steps of insights, until they achieve the confrontation with the Ultimate prepared, and finally they pass through the Ultimate. Practitioners who have confronted the Ultimate may confront others with its presence. This is called the Liberation Bolt, and has an effect not dissimilar from Illumination. (Reading Heortling Mythology, there appear to be Element Rune variations of this - Orlanth's Liberating bolt Stormspear on p.92 appears to work just the same.) The most detailed description of draconic enlightenment at least as per EWF is distributed over Heortling Mythology (p.137-139), History of the Heortling Peoples (48-49, 51-52) and Revealed Mythologies (p.106f) out of the Stafford Library. Ingolf's path to enlightenment (and loss of that through entanglement with the mundane world) names a number of draconic realities beyond mortal ken, alternatively described as draconic hells or as stages of purification on the way to Liberation. The known 7 stages aren't all of this way, and probably only one of many paths to draconic enlightenment, but absent other such sources the one we have to work with.